One would hope, but not necessarily. The consensus around Miche stuff is that it's pretty good, but still there's a reasonable number of duds, so to speak. With all of this said, the bb I have is from a 2004 model Marinoni, so it stands to reason the bb is from around 2003 or so. Not sure though. In the end it's your call, though I'm a bit turned off of their bb's from now on hah =)